How can you become Emotionally Secure?

Question

How do you learn to take care of yourself? What must you do to gain strength?

Answer 1

The best way to become emotionally secure is to look only to yourself for an affirmation of your self-worth instead of looking to others to "boost your ego." You learn to take care of yourself by first realizing that (a) no one is going to take care of you for you, and (b) you're worth taking care of. To gain strength, realize that it's not what life throws at you that defines who and what you are, it's how you deal with what life throws at you that defines who and what you are.

What it all boils down to is deciding how you're going to respond to your own self and the world around you. There's a big difference between being your own worst critic and your own worst enemy. A critic will give positive feedback on the good things and will offer constructive criticism on the bad things. An enemy constantly harps on the negative and keeps saying "not good enough." Which one will you be? Then there's the issue of what other people tell you. When people tell you that you're a loser or worthless, are you going to see their destructive and mean-spirited comments as a pathetic attempt on their part to make themselves feel better by putting you down, or are you actually going to listen to them and believe what they say? When something bad happens in your life, will you handle it by realizing you will have good times and bad times and doing what you can to make the best of it and get through it, or are you going to cry and scream and throw a temper tantrum and whine about how life is so unfair?

BOTTOM LINE: You and you alone are responsible for your own emotional security. Money won't help, stuff won't help, fame won't help, a spouse won't help, family won't help...get the idea? So YOU make the decision to keep yourself together and to have the strength to deal with whatever comes along, and whatever you believe about yourself is what will be true. If you believe you are a good person and that you are strong, you WILL be good and strong. It's all up to you.

Answer 2

Emotional security and strength usually is something you get from the nurturing your parents did when you were an infant, toddler, and small child.

That's when brain connections are being formed, and if the right ones aren't formed then they never are.

Still, though, there are people with tendencies not to be secure who get help or study up on different types of thinking in order to change their thinking patterns and remember some ideas that are helpful.

Other than financial insecurity, all other issues in life aren't a big deal when it comes to "taking care of yourself". You know how to do those: keep yourself clean, eat properly, take care of your health, keep your checkbook balanced, keep air in your tires, etc.

Financial security takes planning, so you have to figure out how much financial security you have and how you can improve your prospects if necessary (either through job changes, career counseling, or education). You also need to plan to save some money and build a small amount of credit in case you need it.

For emotional matters you should probably go to the library and look in the self-help section. Make sure you look for authors/editors who are legitimate doctors, and for now stay away from anything with any religious leanings. You want to find common-sense/hard facts type of information on things you can do to improve your emotional state.

Consider seeing a therapist.

Look for people you find admirable and see what they have done to make themselves secure and strong.

Try to decide (I say "try" because I know some people can't "just decide") to:

Be independent
Be strong
Be tough
Be sensible
Be Positive


and that's all I can think of right now.

Oh - one other thing: Look at people who have horrible illness or horrible living conditions or people who overcome horrible obstacles and keep going anyway. Think of how strong they are or how determined they are and consider that they have overcome worse than you need to. If some are disabled and you're not, ask whether a healthy person like you should be able to be strong when someone who is less than able may have shown super-human strength.

Answer 3

I don't know but i assume it's self preservative. It helps protect them from hurt and pain at the point in time it occurs so that they ca deal with it later when it hurts a little less and you can use retrospective.